This is Not a Sob Story
by Mala
Summary: Like the title says...this is not a sob story. It's just what Faith wants you to know. Set in the near future. Very dark.


Title: "This is Not a Sob Story"   
Author: Mala  
E-mail: malisita@yahoo.com  
Fandom: "General Hospital"  
Rating/Classification: 'R' for language, disturbing themes, angst, violence. First person pov, future fic.   
Disclaimer: Nope. I don't own the characters.  
Summary: This is not a sob story.  
Note: I've been wanting to write about Faith for quite some time... and I knew it was going to be dark and very hard to write.   
  
So, you expect a sob fest, right? You expect me to cry pretty and fiddle with the sleeves of this black dress and dab at my eyes and tell you how my mom ignored me and my daddy hit me and I lost my virginity when I was thirteen and that's why...that's why I did what I did.   
  
Well, you won't get it.   
  
My mother ignored me. My father hit me. I lost my virginity on a carousel horse in the park when I was thirteen.   
  
And I killed Elizabeth Webber because I wanted to.   
  
You're surprised. Even after the lemonade? And the stairs? Oh, you didn't know about that, did you? Yes, I pushed her down the stairs and made the walls of her precious little uterus shake that brat loose. That was me.   
  
I can see you looking at me, wondering how any woman could be so cold.   
  
You think I'm crazy.   
  
The problem is, I'm not.  
  
I'm perfectly sane. You see, I'm a survivor.   
  
I'll even survive this.   
  
And I'll see you in Hell.   
  
But if you want me to start the beginning, I will. Since you're letting me have my say. You're so kind, by the way. I forgot to mention that. You're being so sweet. And I didn't even have to fuck you. Which wouldn't be half-bad, really, because you're a good-looking man. And believe me, I've known a lot of men...  
  
Where were we? Oh. Right. The beginning.   
  
You know that my grandparents were Marco and Catherine Flynn. They ran this town in the '20s. All that glorious power...all that power that could've been mine. After Marco went to jail, my father was given up for adoption. Dear Grandma Catherine...so weak...so insipid. She couldn't raise him. Daddy went looking for her years later, of course, but by then it was too late. He'd already been hustled from foster home to foster home and the Great Depression didn't help things. Neither did World War II.   
  
My mother was a good little Italian Catholic who said her rosary every night and always had dinner warm. Yes, that's how I got the name 'Faith.' It's a good thing she didn't name me 'Chastity'. That would've been beautifully ironic, don't you think? She didn't care that Daddy was a worthless has-been... she worshipped the ground he walked on. And she never said a thing when he raised a hand to me.   
  
When he touched me.   
  
Come on. You can't tell me *that* surprises you.   
  
I was a pretty little girl once. Innocent. Like that little mouse, Elizabeth. I can see you don't believe me. But that's all right. I'm used to that.  
  
My father was a drunk and a menace and he got what he deserved in the end. My mother counted every bead on her rosary the night he fell face first into his pasta primavera.   
  
I was so disappointed she never took a bite.   
  
She died of a heart attack when I was seventeen.   
  
No...it wasn't my doing.   
  
Two suspicious deaths in two years would've been too much. I wasn't stupid.   
  
I always thought Roscoe... maybe Roscoe did it somehow... but no.   
  
You see, if I was like little Lizzie Bobblehead, I'd say that Roscoe saved me. That he changed my life. That he was my hero. That he saw something in me that no one else did. My shining white knight on a white horse.   
  
We were married at Queen of Angels a week after my mother died.   
  
Roscoe didn't save me.   
  
He wasn't a hero. He was an asshole.   
  
It's been eighteen years. I can say that.   
  
He married me because I was knocked up.   
  
It wasn't the first time... but it was the first time it was his. And he had some misguided sense of honor... that because he'd held me down and pushed my legs apart and made me scream, he had to marry me.   
  
I didn't have a better offer.   
  
Not unless you counted the boys I was running with on the street. You'd know them now. Max. Johnny. Francis. Sonny's loyal pack of dogs. We all grew up together. Our mothers made us all go to Sunday school...and we all took First Communion at the same mass. And now they've all roughed me up. They've all had their hands on me.   
  
They would've killed a man for touching me when I was a kid.   
  
Except that I got that job done myself.   
  
If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.   
  
That's where men like Sonny, like Alcazar, have it all wrong, you see. They hire people to do their dirty work. They're cowards. They think that because the blood isn't on their hands, they're somehow better than everyone else.   
  
Having blood on your hands gives you power. It gives you strength.   
  
I miscarried that baby in our apartment on Courtland Street two months after we got hitched. Roscoe slammed me up against a wall because he was drunk and he was horny and he was so stupid...so unbelievably stupid... he didn't know why I was bleeding. Not even when I pushed him away and left handprints on his shirt and yelled at him to call an ambulance.   
  
I cleaned the red stains off the receiver when I got home from the hospital.   
  
Why'd I stay with him? I told you...he was the best offer. He was small time in Frank Smith's organization... but I knew he could be big time with the right support. And I was going to *be* that support. No matter what. He was going places until Sonny had him killed. And I was going to be right to next him in all those places.   
  
Oh, you think I'm smart enough to have gone to college? Really? That's flattering. I dropped out of high school my sophomore year and you can't get into PCU flat on your back.   
  
My father drank away all our family money. Catherine...Catherine never gave a shit about me. Maybe she knew... maybe she knew I was just too ugly inside for her. You know she left all her money to charity? And that stupid club...it should've been *mine*...maybe if I'd had that...   
  
No.   
  
I'd still be poison.   
  
Poison with a PhD.   
  
Maybe then...maybe then Ric would've loved me.   
  
Ric. Stupid, gorgeous, Ric.   
  
He could've been my white knight if he'd wanted to.   
  
I would've let him.   
  
You're still thinking about my miscarriage, aren't you?   
  
I told you, it wasn't the first baby I lost. My father made me abort the first. The second...only lasted a few weeks. I don't think I even realized I was pregnant until years later.   
  
Why am I laughing?  
  
Do you really have to ask?   
  
All children do is cause *pain*.  
  
Most of the world's population would be better off having never been born. Most people are total wastes of space.   
  
You. Me. Elizabeth.   
  
My oldest would've been 22 this year.   
  
I can see you doing the math.   
  
You look a little sick.   
  
Are you sorry for me?   
  
Imagine that.   
  
I don't think about them.   
  
I don't have their little ghosts in the back of my head making me do things. I don't touch my stomach in the middle of the night and picture it all fat and wish for things that might have been.   
  
I told you, this wasn't a sob fest. It's not a love story.   
  
I'm not sorry. Not for any of it.   
  
You see, I'm a survivor.   
  
No...*I'm* the hero.   
  
Now you're the one laughing.   
  
But you don't get it.  
  
I saved her.   
  
I saved that stupid little girl.   
  
From what?   
  
From turning into *me*.   
  
So, go ahead and do it, Officer Spencer.   
  
Get on with it. Shoot me.   
  
That's your job, isn't it? Crusader for the downtrodden? Catch the bad guys and the worse girls and make them pay?   
  
Just make sure to scrub all the blood out from beneath your nails.  
  
You wouldn't want to leave any trace of me behind.   
  
But keep the strength.   
  
Always keep the strength.  
  
Someday, it'll be all you have left.  
  
--end--  
  
September 7, 2003.  
  



End file.
